My absolute disgust for this event cannot be accurately measured by current human means.
However, in advance of the event actually happening, a fine Google searching technique was very helpful to my efforts in the event in the past.
Google Search Operator: Site
When looking for your data (and seeing as you're probably going to be limited to only one .gov location), Google may return many locations that are not within the given usgs.gov domain. To limit your results, do the following:
1. Type in your search material (e.g.: Big Earthquakes)
2. Add "site:usgs.gov" to the end (so you would have: Big Earthquakes site:usgs.gov)
3. Search! Now you're only looking at pages within the usgs.gov area (such as earthquakes.usgs.gov, or whatever you end up with)
This technique is effective both in this event and in real life. I now use it to scour my school's website to find the publications I'm looking for.
Other fun Google searching techniques can be found here:
http://www.google.com/help/operators.html. I personally recommend use of a search engine, but your strategy must be formed in your own team.